In Exile / In Vrijheid

A film by

the Netherlands | 48' | 10/2016 | fiction

In Vrijheid tells the story of a mother who gets her lost son back. For months Neziha has lived in fear, because her son Ismaël left for Syria. Then she receives a message saying that Ismaël is back. He fled Syria and is now detained in the Netherlands. Under strict conditions, the judge allows him to await his trial in his mother’s house. Neziha is determined not to let her son slip through her fingers a second time. She does everything within her power to make Ismaël a productive member of society again. But the more she tries to reach him, the greater the distance between mother and son becomes.

Floor van der Meulen

Biography

In 2012, Floor graduated from the Willem de Kooning Academy. After graduation she worked as an assistant director for documentary filmmaker Klaartje Qurijns and other Dutch film directors. She worked on video art related projects and developed the short documentary Bekerrapers (The Cup Collectors) with production company KeyDocs. In 2014 she made her international debut as a documentary filmmaker with Paradijsbestormers (Storming Paradise) in collaboration with production company KeyDocs and BNN. In 2015, together with Syrian artist Issa Touma and Dutch co-director Thomas Vroege, she made the international acclaimed short documentary 9 Days – From My Window In Aleppo. This short documentary was shown on film festivals around the world and won the European Film Award for best short 2016. In 2016 she also made here debut as a fiction director with In Vrijheid (In Exile) which was nominated for a the Dutch Golden Calfs Best Television Drama and won Best Actress. Together again with Issa Touma and Thomas Vroege, she made a follow-up story on life in Aleppo: Greetings from Aleppo.

Today she works on the feature length documentary Last Male Standing and is developing her first fiction feature.